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Title: A Beautiful Ideal
Author: Emma Goldman
Date: March 17th, 1908
Language: en
Topics: idealism, lecture, talk, ideals
Source: https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/anarchist-beginnings/emma-goldman-a-beautiful-ideal-1908/
Notes: The lecture which Emma Goldman was to have read before the Edelstadt Social, March 17th, 1908, at Workingmens’ Hall, 12th & Waller Streets, Chicago. But was prevented by Captain Mahoney of Maxwell Street Station with a squad of about fifty police.

Emma Goldman

A Beautiful Ideal

“To the popular mind anarchism stands for destruction; to the more

enlightened it stands for an ideal—-a beautiful but thoroughly

impracticable ideal. Anarchism does stand for the destruction of the

institutions that have been and are keeping the human mind in bondage

and that are robbing mankind of the right to the use of the necessities

of life. Viewed from the standpoint of cents and dollars, anarchism is

truly impracticable, and those whose aim in life is wealth and power

will do well to keep out of the anarchist movement. But measured by true

value, namely, human character, integrity and real usefulness to

society, anarchism is the most practical of all theories—a proposition

which I shall attempt to prove.

“Anarchism is a theory of human development which lays no less stress

than socialism upon the economic or materialistic aspect of social

relations; but while granting that the cause of the immediate evil is an

economic one we believe that the solution of the social question

confronting us today must be wrought out from the equal consideration of

the whole of our experience.

“To understand society as a whole it behooves the social student to

analyze the separate atoms of society—namely, the individual and the

motives that prompt every individual and every collective act. What are

these motives?

“First, the individual instinct, standing for self-expression; second,

the social instinct, which inspires collective and social life. These

instincts in their latent condition are never antagonistic to each

other.

“On the contrary, they are dependent upon one another for their complete

and normal development. Unfortunately, the organization of society is

such that these instincts are being brought into constant antagonism.

“Indeed, the history of our experience in thought and action is the

record of this strife within each individual and its reflection within

each society.

“To better illustrate my point, let me give you two cases, representing

the extreme development of individual and social instinct. Take Russell

Sage, for instance, a man whose individual instincts knew no bounds; a

man who, to use a common proverb, did not even observe the ordinary

honesty existing among thieves.

“I mean that his methods of accomplishing his aim, the accumulation of

wealth, were so obscure, so unscrupulous, that even his own colleagues,

had little regard for him.

“Indeed, it is safe to say that the instinct that prompted the actions

of Russell Sage were so antisocial that every one of his steps resulted

in crushing out human life and in bringing untold misery and poverty

upon those whom his iron heel did not actually crush.

“Such a type of a man is possible only in a society based upon

inequality, a society that is held together not by natural bonds, but by

artificial and arbitrary methods.

“Again, let us take a type of human being with the social instinct

developed to the extreme—Louise Michelle, the world-renowned anarchist,

“Mother Louise,” as she was called by every child of the gutter. Her

love for man and beast knew no bounds.

“It mattered not whether it was a forlorn kitten or a homeless dog, or a

shelterless human being—she gave to all, even the last crust of bread.

“Yet to satisfy her great soul she was compelled to deny her individual

instinct to the extent of living in great and constant poverty, of

exposing herself to many dangers, to imprisonment, and to the heat of

New Caledonia, whither she had been sent with many other political

prisoners after the Paris Commune of ‘71.

“Anarchists insist that conditions must be radically wrong, if human

instincts develop to such extremes at the expense of each other.

“Anarchism in its scientific and philosophic calculations represents

that force in human life which can harmonize and bring into unity the

individual and social instincts of the individual and society.

“The greatest obstacle in the way of such harmonious blending, are

property, or the monopoly of things—the denial of the right of others to

their use, and authority—the government of man by man, embodied in

majority rule, or the absolute disregard of individual life in the

organization that for want of a better name stands for society.

“Therefore the first tendency of anarchism is to make good the dignity

of the individual human being by freeing him from every kind of

arbitrary restraint—economic, political, social.

“In so doing anarchism proposes to make apparent, in their true force

the social bonds, which always have and always will knit men together

and which are the actual basis of a real normal and sane society. The

means of doing this rests with each man’s latent qualities and his

opportunities.

“I have already spoken of the coercive and arbitrary tendency of

centralization in either the industrial or political life of a people,

and I now wish to say a few words on what seems to the anarchist the

most dangerous side of centralization.

“Man has been degraded into a mere part of a machine and all that makes

for spontaneity, for originality, for the power of initiative, has been

either dulled or completely killed in him until he is but a living

corpse, dragging out an aimless, spiritless and idealess existence.

“Man is here to be sacrificed upon the altar of things, heaps and heaps

of things, that are as dark and dull as the human machines that have

produced them.

“Yet how can we talk of social wealth when the production of that wealth

can be attained only at the expense of human lives, thousands and

thousands of human lives? And what are these lives worth without the

power of initiative, of spontaneity?

“Anarchism holds that the simplest human life, it given opportunity and

scope, is infinitely more important to society than all the scientific

regulation and adjusting of social arrangements.

“For, in proportion as that simple life grows into a conscious,

intelligent, well-rounded factor, recognizing its true relation to its

fellow, regulations and forms will take care of themselves.

“Anarchists believe that organized authority, or the state, is necessary

only in the interest of monopoly. They fail to see that it has at any

time in the history of man promoted human welfare or aided in any way in

the building of human character or human possibilities. Anarchism,

therefore, aims at the simultaneous overthrow of monopoly and

government.

“It is well to distinguish here between government as organized

authority, whose purposes are realized at all times through the exercise

of brute force—police clubs, state militias, the armies, and the navies

of the world—and government in the sense or a spontaneously arising

social order and happiness, whose immediate appearance among men awaits

only, the disappearance of the world-enslaving and world-slaughtering

forces of monopoly.

“The centralized method of production has necessitated a centralized

form of government that is constantly increasing its power and forever

prying into the minutest detail of human life.

“In fact, it is safe to say that man’s whole life, from the cradle to

the grave is under constant surveillance of authority. I think that

America illustrates this point perfectly. So long as this country was

young, its people battling with the elements and striving for life,

liberty and the pursuit of happiness, every man counted for something.

“People were more closely related to each other and the sense of

comradeship and brotherhood was keener and deeper.

“But in proportion as America grew in wealth its method of governing

became more centralized, more far-reaching, more contrary to the life

and rights of man, until today he is suffered to drag along his wretched

existence, not by ‘the grace of God, but by the grace of a network of

laws which he knows nothing about and which are absolutely foreign to

his natural growth and development.

“With this in view, anarchism stands for voluntary productive and

distributive associations, using a common capital and loosely federated

into communities, eventually developing into communism in production and

consumption, recognizing at all times, however, the right of the

individual or a number of individuals to arrange their mode of work-—in

harmony with their taste or inclination.

“As to crimes and criminals, anarchists know, only too well that they

are naught else but symptoms of an artificial social arrangement,

enforced by authority. They will disappear to a large extent with the

destruction of their creators, namely, capitalism and government.

“Crime, resultant from a defective brain, can surely not be cured by

brute force. But certainly modern medical methods and an increased sense

of fraternity, aided by improved education, can accomplish more than

prison bars, handcuffs, locksteps, or chains.

“The American methods proposed or employed to hound down anarchists have

been practiced in European powers for nearly one hundred years and have

been given up in despair.

“The truth can not be silenced by constant discoveries of ‘anarchist

plots,’ or by designating every demented being as an anarchist, nor even

by burning anarchist literature, or establishing a system of espionage,

which invades the sanctity of individual privacy and makes the life of

its victims an intolerable evil.

“There are thousands of people in this country who see in such methods

the last desperate efforts of a dying age. The new, strong in thought

and ideals, strong in human sympathy and fellowship is fast approaching,

and when it arrives the present will be remembered as a nightmare, that

humanity dreamed, rather than as an awful reality it actually lived.”